- March 25, 2025
Financial items are usually on the Flagler County School Board’s consent agenda to be approved in one bundle. But new board member Janie Ruddy has made it clear that for some district expenditures she’s going to ask questions.
At the board’s Feb. 25 business meeting, Ruddy questioned payments to Flagler Broadcasting for radio ads and then voted against them (the ads were approved 4-1). At an agenda workshop on March 11, Ruddy questioned the need for a $43,300 compensation study for school and district administrators. And she brought up another two payments of $226.80 each for radio ads that provide information on school district activities.
She asked if the ads were being evaluated to see if they were meeting their target audience. Superintendent LaShakia Moore said the ads have been budgeted for the year.
“At the end of the year,” Moore said, “we’ll do surveys that will inform us to the ways (people) like to receive communications.”
The ads, Moore said, are designed to reach people who don’t look on Flagler Schools’ website or read the district's social media posts and don’t have access to parent communication platforms.
“Just a reminder, our stakeholders include people who don’t have children in Flagler Schools,” Moore added.
Board Chair Will Furry, noting that Ruddy already made her points at the business meeting, said the $226 radio payments should be put in perspective.
“We have a chief executive who we’ve put in charge of managing the budget. We’ve given her a threshold to spend. It is absolutely our duty to have oversight and accountability over what we are spending,” he said. “But when we have a general fund over $165 million, to spend this much time on $226 is not a good use of our time.”
But Ruddy said a board member shouldn't just rubber stamp district spending.
"You have made your point clear,” she said to Furry, “that the way you want to run your seat is you’re going to put your trust in Ms. Moore and her staff or anybody who sits in those roles, but for me, and how I’m going to serve my term is to be accountable to the people, to be the voice so they can see how their money is being spent, so they can tell me and us, do they agree, do they not agree with this. A School Board member doesn’t just rubber stamp approve these items, we investigate, we ask, we recommend policy and strategy.”
As the two began talking over each other, Furry banged the gavel and said since Ruddy already made her points, they will be moving on to other matters.
Earlier, Ruddy questioned the compensation study by Diane Meiller and Associates. The study, said Moore, would compare the district’s compensation to administrators compared to other districts.
Ruddy said she was concerned that the study would find that the administrators should receive raises more than the district could afford and wondered if the study would be worth the equivalent of a teacher’s annual salary.
“I believe this is a good use of resources in order to identify where we are,” Moore said. “This is a category of individuals we need to ensure we’re remaining competitive with. We can pool some information together and that’s been done, but to be able to do a comprehensive study with some suggestions about how we can get to a place of getting those individuals … to where they need to be related to their salary, that information will be supplied to us.”
Lauren Ramirez, Derek Barrs and Ruddy asked for more information about the study and its scope. Moore said she would provide that.
